ABSTRACT
the beginning of the century Milan was busy, dig-nified, practical, but still a beautiful city. There were a few ostentatiously modern streets, proudly built to reflect the new industrial prosperity, which reminded one of Wilhelmian Berlin or avenidas in Latin American capitals. Most of the city was ancient. Many buildings (including La Scald) were in the late eighteenth-century neo-classical style, favored by Maria Theresa, Napoleon and Eugene Beauharnais, and the Archduke Ranier. Wars and revolutions, the Austrians, the French, and then again the Austrians had followed one another without any noticeable change in the official taste in architecture. Here and there were still proud rococo buildings belonging to the aristocracy, famous ancient churches, hidden among the winding little streets that dated from the Renaissance or the Middle Ages, which had the names of guilds. The inner ring of the old city still had its moat, the navigable canal, above which appeared very old gardens that drooped romantic foliage over the green water.
